


Challenge Fics

by copperbadge



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Piracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-20
Updated: 2005-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three short fics written for a challenge, many years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Truth At All

**Author's Note:**

> These fics were written after Black Pearl but before any of the other films were released. They were written to a challenge issued by LadyJaida, now long lost in the shifting sands of LJ.

_Your challenge is: Pick any of the scars, the brand, the tat OR Jack's skull ring. How did Jack come by 'em? Elaborate._

They'd made him wash. Not even just wash. Scrub.

Jack was nineteen and had been to India and China, so he couldn't say that the warehouse had more silk than he'd seen in his entire life, but it was the most silk he'd ever seen in England at one time. 

He shrugged. He had the gold to pay for a silk dress if a silk dress was wanted. And for flowers. And a cart. It wasn't the money that bothered him. He liked spending money on women. That was what women were for. 

(All right, that certainly wasn't what women were for, but sex or dresses, either way one had to spend money, and money he had to spare after the last berth he'd taken on a very successful pirate schooner.)

It was the bathing that had bothered him. The smell kept fleas away, he'd argued. She'd argued back that the smell would keep anything away.

For a whore, she certainly was making a big deal out of marriage, he decided. 

She was an easy wench to please, however, and he did love her after a fashion, and thought it would be sort of amusing to have a wife. Bootstrap had a wife, and didn't seem to mind much. 

Then the morning of the wedding came, and with it came a small, effeminate man carrying a case full of sharp objects.

"What's all this then?" Jack asked interestedly, peering at the scissors and razors and knives. "New 'aircut for the bride?"

"For the groom, sir," the man said, neatly laying them out. "We are going to have a shave and a clip, sir."

Jack stared at him.

"But...but that's m'hair," he said, one hand rising protectively to cover the fledgeling dredlocks. Bootstrap had only put them in a few months ago, and he'd been adding beads and bits of this-and-that ever since to make it look really authentically pirate. 

"And very...interesting hair it is too," the man said. "But all this...flummery with bangles and all...not at all appropriate for married life."

Jack bolted. 

Bootstrap was waiting for him aboard the Bon Chance, their ship. He smiled when he saw Jack step into the tiny cabin, still dressed in his groom's outfit.

"Knew you wouldn't take to it," he said. Jack shed what he could of the stiff, uncomfortable clothing, taking some well-worn and pleasantly filthy clothing from Bootstrap's locker. He found the wedding rings in his pocket and tossed them to Bootstrap.

"Melt'em down," he said. "And put 'em in a knife handle and if I ever, ever try that again, stab me wiv it."

Bootstrap grinned and tossed him something small and silvery, that was hard against his palm when he caught it.

"Y'aren't a pirate till you've left at least one woman you loved on account of loving a ship more," he said. Jack looked down at the small ring in his hand. It was silver, with a skull on it. It grinned at him.

He grinned back, and slipped it over his index finger.

"Now let's get the hell out of port before she comes looking for you," Bootstrap added, rising and walking towards deck, to give the order to cast off.


	2. Baubles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your challenge is: Pick any of the objects braided/knotted/glued by dead creature juice into Jack's hair. How did Jack come by 'em? Elaborate._

When he was out drinking -- or in drinking -- or around, drinking -- or when he was out pillaging, or whoring, or in doing any of the preceding, or around doing any of them at all, or perhaps when he was doing all of the above with a vigour that would have exhausted some men half his age, Jack Sparrow was happy to spin a yarn. Often it involved what Will Turner's father-in-law would have referred to as his dubious sartorial splendor.

But what really interested the drinkers and the whores and even many of those he'd pillaged -- curious people amused him, and survived his pillages far better than hystericals or ill-timed heroes -- was his hair.

Specifically, what was in his hair, and he didn't mean the many small insects who placidly shared his existence. 

He used to tell the men he drank with that he'd a bit of bead or shell or decoration from every man he'd ever killed. When they pointed out that this wasn't, really, all that many, he'd reply that one of the baubles was the key to a box in which were several dozen buttons from Royal Navy and East India Company uniforms. This was always good for a laugh and sometimes good for a round of drinks.

He told the whores that the decorations were islander magic, and if he were robbed or cheated they'd work a powerful charm against the villain who dared lay a hand on Captain Jack Sparrow. This did ensure that he always got a fair price, and very rarely had his pocket picked while his trousers were off. 

He told the curious victims of his thefts that they were gifts from the whores. This tended to impress the men and frighten the women, which was his whole motivation in the first place. 

"What are they?" Will Turner had once asked. Jack had grinned his gold-toothed grin. 

"Gifts. Well, more like, mementos," was all he said.

When he rose to leave the sleeping Will that night, he paused long enough to cover the man before pulling on his clothes and effects, and preparing to leave. He sailed at dawn. 

As he leaned over, one of the baubles caught the candlelight and reflected it against the wall; it had fallen off and been re-strung many times. A small tarnished coin. 

He picked up his knife and walked to where Will's clothing lay in a heap. Bending, he took the sleeve, examining it. The link holding the cuff had a swordsman's guild mark on it. Good enough.

He tucked the link in his pocket, glanced back at the sleeping Will as he had at a sleeping Boostrap a dozen years ago, and left. As he went, he fixed the small link between two beads. He knew he couldn't really feel the weight of it, but he fancied he could. 

Spoils of conquest, Bootstrap had always called it. Jack grinned as he made his way towards the Pearl.


	3. The Willful Commission of Crimes Against The Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your challenge is: Pick any of the crimes against the crown listed by Norrington and elaborate._

You would have thought someone would have objected. 

Their mother certainly should have, and their father probably would have, but Will Turner was off to England to sell swords at court, and so could not object, and Elizabeth Turner...

Well, she'd been raised on them herself, hadn't she? Stories of pirates.

Jack sat on a side-turned barrel, as filthy and bedecked and impenitent as ever, talking quite seriously -- or as seriously as he ever got -- with two young girls, completely identical, dressed in impeccable silk dresses. 

Emily and Ellen, both age 8, loved their Uncle Jack Sparrow. Elizabeth's only caution was that Jack try not to mention whores until they were at least fourteen.

"So there we was," Jack said, "Bootstrap -- that's your granddad, as fine a man and pirate as ever lived -- all gussed up like a Cardinal, and Gillot, mayherestinpeace, and myself dressed as Clerics, with the sacks o'gunpowder and rum under our cassocks, like."

"But why gunpowder?" Ellen asked.

"Oh, this wasn't just any gunpowder. Finest Chinese gunpowder ever seen by man. Twice as powerful as t'other stuff, fetch a good price. And dressin' up was the only way, dontchesee, to get it to shore without bein' harassed. But then there was some da -- some bloo -- some holy saints' day, and we got called upon to join in at ther local temple'a worship. And they took us inside 'fore they'd let the crowd in. And there Gillot was, preparin' to swing the incense burner like the good C'o'E boy he was raised, when one of the altarboys gave 'im a hotfoot."

"What's a hotfoot?" Emily inquired.

"Er -- well, you rolls up a bit of paper and lights it, and sticks it under a man's shoe -- don't go tellin' yer dad I told you that," Jack added hurriedly. "Tennyrate, Bootstrap and I saw what was about, and you can bet we lit up out of that church like it was the doomsday..."

Jack paused to knuckle a tear of nostalgic joy out of his eye.

"It was the way he woulda wanted to go," he told them. "What with between the gunpowder sparking and the sacks 'a rum, Gillot went up like a Roman candle. Finest explosion I seen in all my born days. Burned the church right to the ground." 

Elizabeth, passing the room in which Jack was minding the children, saw the wide eyes of the children and the dismayed look of their nanny, and smiled.


End file.
